Pokemon Violet First Thoughts vol. 1

First off, everything you've seen online about the performance and buggy graphics is true. Aside from the poor framerate, pop-in, and low resolution textures, this game has issues. I've walked through a door before sliding backwards to perform the opening animation, had shadows rapidly flash on-and-off, and seen a wall texture melt like a Salvador Dali painting. What's wild is that I don't remember things like this at all in Legends: Arceus. What happened!?

As for the game itself, it feels less like an evolution of LA and more like an evolution of the Wild Area from SwSh. You can sneak around, but there's no point. Locking on to a target is finicky, and it'll always start a battle anyway, so you may as well just run into Pokemon. The battles are of the traditional style, with a ton of menu pop-ups just to enter and finish a fight. Catching a Pokemon really slows the pace down, which is unfortunate because there's a TON of Pokemon to catch! like damn they really put a ton of variety so soon into the game! Again, reminding me of the Wild Area.

The environments are well-designed, once you get Miraidon and can really explore. I hope once I get all the upgrades, Miraidon will feel as good to pilot as swapping between all the Ride Pokemon. There's a few places that I don't think I was supposed to be able to access yet, but with persistence and help from the physics engine, I got up there. Just a few items, no major skips.

Then we get to school, and did you know this game has Social Links? you attend classes and then chat up the professors afterwards. Not sure what it's building towards, though. And some of these teachers are really cool, even if their classes are mainly just tutorials for 6-year-olds.

Unfortunately, you seem to be stuck with 4 shitty school uniforms and no other clothing options. Sure, you can put on hats and shoes and all that, but half the color options clash hard with the Violet uniform! Huge step backwards.

A step forwards, however - FOLLOWING POKEMON ARE BACK! I repeat, Pokemon can follow you in this game! you can actually literally choose any Pokemon and they'll follow you along! They finally put it back in a mainline game! but, it's Gamefreak, so of course it wasn't implemented properly - most Pokemon are too slow to actually keep up, so you'll just run along and out-pace them, defeating the entire point. Goddammit. Your Pokemon can pick up items while out like this, but since you'll be running ahead of them, you end up just picking up stuff yourself anyway.

The other new thing is that you can call your Pokemon to auto-pilot attack nearby wild Pokemon. Felt like summoning my Stand, I just point at a group of Hoppip and watch my Fuecoco tear through them. They gain exp and items in the background while you do other things, but you can't really go very far and can't start any battles of your own without interrupting them. Their success is based on level and typing, it ignores that the Pokemon's actual movesets, btw.

Anyway, I've played a lot, but only just got to the part where the game "begins" and I'm sent out on my Treasure Hunt quest to defeat the 8 gym leaders, 5 titans, and 5 Team Star bosses. This pacing reminds me of XY and SwSh, where you can waste a ton of time just getting to the first gym. And like those games, things will probably pick up from here.